Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing. Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why. You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

About sound intervals


Sound intervals are much like the Func Interval , which lets a function or method be called as part of a Sequence or Parallel. They allow a sound to be played as part of an Interval. Unfortunately, they don't provide much functionality beyond that, and trying to loop a sound by putting it in a SoundInterval and looping the Interval doesn't work very well. Really, the only reason to use a sound interval is when we're using Sequence and Parallel to create long scripts that need sounds to play at certain parts in them, for example a cinematic sequence in a role-playing game. That's why we didn't use any in this chapter; we don't have any really complicated scripting going on. We already went over the sound interval constructor, but for the sake of completeness we'll repeat it here. This is taken from the Panda3D manual:

SoundInterval(mySound,loop = 0 or 1,duration = myDuration,volume = myVolume,startTime = myStartTime)

Pop quiz – sounding off

This was another long chapter...